Vol. XIX Nr. 2
Virginia Hill
Restrictive relative clauses in Acadian French
Abstract: Restricted relatives in Acadian French display the following peculiarities: generalization of que ‘that’ as the relative complementizer; deletion of que ‘that’; orphaned prepositions; failure of subject-verb agreement between the relative noun and the embedded verb. This paper argues that such peculiarities arise from the tendency of Acadian French to use a matching rather than a raising pattern of derivation in restrictive relatives, which further involves non-quantificational chains. This parametric setting contrasts with the systematically raising pattern in the restrictive relative of Standard French.
Keywords: Acadian French, restrictive relatives, raising and matching derivation
Diana Anițescu
Result nominalizations in Romanian light verb constructions
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to analyze the class of Romanian nominalizations which enter light verb constructions with the light verbs a face ‘make, do’ and a avea ‘have’. We show that such nominalizations are not event, but result. In order to test this hypothesis, we have chosen two of the most productive suffixes which appear with these nominalizations in light verb constructions, namely -ţie and -re. As will be seen, the two suffixes may attach to the same verb stems, giving rise to doublets (e.g. from a afirma ‘state’: afirmaţie vs. afirmare). The syntactic analysis of these doublets proves that -re is specialized for event readings, while –ţie generally gives rise to result nominals. Returning to light verb constructions, when a verb has both -ție and –re nominalizations available, the light verb will always select the result deverbal noun, the one ending in -ţie, while its -re counterpart will have an event reading and thus will be banned from the light verb construction.
Keywords: light verb constructions, result nominalizations, Romanian, –ţie suffix, –re suffix.
Elena Lăcătuș
Romanian aspectual verbs: Restructuring and functional heads
Abstract: The present paper evaluates Fukuda’s (2007a, 2008) Functional Head Analysis of aspectual verbs on the basis of the analysis of aspectual verbs in Romanian with focus on whether they induce restructuring, whether they occupy functional projections, and whether the structural position which they occupy is reflected in their control and/or raising behaviour. The data indicates that Romanian aspectual verbs behave like lexical verbs. They merge in the same syntactic position, irrespective of the complement which they select and which can be uniformly analysed as ModP/FinP. Their control or raising behaviour is not correlated with different syntactic positions.
Keywords: aspectual verbs, Romanian, restructuring, functional projections, control, raising
Vincenzo Nicolò Di Caro
Multiple Agreement Constructions: A macro-comparative analysis of Pseudo-Coordination with the motion verb go in the Arabic and Sicilian dialects
Abstract: I discuss some syntactic properties of go in verbal Pseudo-Coordination, in which it is followed by an inflected lexical verb and preceded by an optional connecting element. Following the analysis in Cardinaletti and Giusti (2001, 2003), I consider examples from different Sicilian varieties to show that the ones from the Eastern Coast (Di Caro 2015), where go can become grammaticalized as an aspect marker and thus lose its argument structure and its semantics of motion, are reminiscent of some Multiple Agreement Constructions displayed by most Arabic dialects (Jarad 2014). In both groups of languages, the grammaticalized go can also occur in an invariant and phonetically eroded version. In the macro-comparison I am proposing, I suggest language contact between Arabs/Berbers and the indigenous people in Sicily from 9th to 13th century as a factor in the productivity of Sicilian Pseudo-Coordination as an isolated case in the Romance domain.
Keywords: grammaticalization of motion verb go, multiple agreement constructions, Pseudo-Coordination, surprise effect.
Diana Hornoiu
Compliments and compliment responses in Romanian conversational discourse
Abstract: The present paper is a corpus-based analysis of compliments and compliment responses in naturally occurring talk-in-interaction in Romanian. The analysis is carried out within a theoretical framework that blends conversation analysis and the theories of politeness proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987) and Leech (1983, 2013). Compliments and compliment responses are viewed as social actions which are co-produced and negotiated among participants in the talk exchange. The aim of the study is to identify the types of possible compliment responses allowed by a mechanism that works under two opposing constraints: express agreement with addressee (see Brown and Levinson’s positive politeness strategies) or give symbolic gifts to addressee, such as praise (see Brown and Levinson’s positive politeness strategies), on the one hand, and minimize praise to self (see Leech’s maxim of modesty), on the other. The compliment sequence is considered within the extended interactional environment, with a view to highlighting the interconnectedness of sequential organization, preferred seconds and communicative function. The article also addresses the use and function of various particles occurring in compliments and compliment responses and their role in how speaker alignments and misalignments are achieved.
Keywords: compliment responses, positive politeness, negative politeness, maxim of modesty, speech acts, sequential organization
Elena Buja. 2017. The Acquisition of Romanian. (Reviewed by Veronica Tomescu)